Checklist Forms

On October 30, 1935 an experimental Boeing Model 299 took off at Wright Field, Ohio with Army Air Corps test pilot Major Ployer Peter Hill and Boeing chief test pilot Leslie Tower at the controls. The flight ended in a disaster shortly after takeoff. The aircraft crashed, sadly killing both pilots.

At the time, Boeing was challenging a few other companies for the U.S. Army Air Corps contract. The crashed Model 299 could (and would) have meant the demise of Boeing, as much of the company’s fortunes were tied to government contracts. Crash investigation revealed that a single missed step in a routine pre-flight procedure (the crew forgot to disengage gust locks on flight controls), was responsible for the crash which took lives of both test pilots, and also put Boeing’s future on the verge of collapse.

Unwilling to give up, Boeing had to make sure that the history of the doomed flight of Model 299 would never repeat itself. Working together with the pilots of the 2nd Bombardment Group, Boeing had solved the problem — accidentally producing two of the greatest inventions of the 20th century — the Flying Fortress and the checklist.

The Model 299 has survived. It entered service as one of the most iconic aircrafts of World War II — the Boeing B-17. The fix for the missed step in the pre-flight procedure came in a form of a pre-flight checklist. However simple and self-evident, checklists are used on every aircraft, every flight up to this day.

Checklists expanded far beyond aviation. Today, checklists are being used in human resources, finance, event planning, media production, automotive maintenance, health, travel… everywhere. While the first checklists were handwritten on a piece of paper, checklist technologies quickly progressed to printed and laminated forms, and with the invention of the computer — to electronic forms displayed on computer screens. Finally, the Internet has moved checklists to the cloud.

Online checklist forms — the Payformix way

Payformix honors the aviation heritage of the checklist by giving you the simplest and the quickest way to create checklists web forms — very much the same way it was invented by the aviators of the Greatest Generation — by typing your checklist form as you would type a text document. Payformix automatically produce online checklist forms from your text.

All historical digressions aside — typing is the fastest form of human interaction with an electronic device, be it a computer, tablet, or a smartphone. Let’s make use of it!

To see this innovative (really — invented back in the 1930s and perfected by time) approach to checklist form making, check out this demo, where a fully functional HR checklist form is being created by a simulated electronic typewriter in less than 40 seconds. Complete form can be examined here.